"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The result, I predict, will be a humanitarian catastrophe that makes Somalia look like a picnic. It’s not surprising that the Egyptian mob might attack the Israeli embassy. The Egyptian street has nothing to do but rise up against perceived oppressors, because nothing good awaits them; and the desperation that will follow the collapse of the Arab “Spring” threatens every Middle Eastern regime, such that the rulers have to try to get out in front of the rage. But what will they actually do? The Egyptian military is hanging onto power by its fingernails. If it attacks Israel, it will lose, and generals will be hanged from lamp posts. The Syrian military is too busy killing protesters to attack Israel, or to assist Hezbollah in a confrontation with Israel.
What we are likely to witness during the next two years will be repellent, even horrifying–but not necessarily dangerous.

Read the whole, depressing thing. American exceptionalism, indeed: decades and billions have simply not waved wands where wanted.

And, while it’s cheap and easy to take swipes at the President over U.S. foreign policy, precisely what anyone would do differently or better is not abundantly clear.

Comments

Joe

Obama has no clue on Egypt, but then again neither does anyone else. It is a messy situation and the seeds for it go back well before Jimmy Carter. That said, Obama certainly handled the “Arab Spring” poorly. We need to be really careful not to alienate the military or signal to other Arab leaders we will sell them out (which destroys our credibility and makes things even more unstable).

Anonymous

“while it’s cheap and easy to take swipes at the President over U.S. foreign policy, precisely what anyone would do differently or better is not abundantly clear.”

How about not throwing Mubarack under the bus? The man who’d maintained the peace primarily w/ Israel, but also the Middle East. Wars don’t break out there w/o at least Egypt’s tacit support.

Can’t blame Oblunder? With the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists waiting in the wings? Even I foresaw the coming disaster – war, sharia, and pestilence. And I’m no Middle East wonk.

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

Egypt and Arabia weren’t problems with ready solutions, unless you go back to the beginning of the arbitrary and artificial assignment of territories to nomadic tribes. We could blame the British . . . but it is a bit late in the game. We’re in a containment phase now.

Barbaric cultures produce barbaric governance with barbaric results. All the liberal wishing and hoping to the contrary notwithstanding, all cultures were not and are not equal, or even in the same century of civilization.

Anonymous

The Egyptian Military has been selling us out for decades. Mubarak’s son the one who was heir apparent was in the process of trying to give the civilian side of the government independence of and ascendance over the military. Absent “Arab spring” when Mubarak died there a high probability that there would have been a coup behind the scenes perhaps but a coup none the less. My biggest fear for Egypt is that in the inevitable chaos their pre-seventh century heritage will be lost or destroyed.

Anonymous

To find the cause one would have to go back to Mohamed. Otherwise spot on.

Joe

Adjoran, Egypt has a lot of problems, but assignment of arbitrary borders is not one of them. Egypt (at least 95% of its population) remains the Nile Valley, from Aswan to the Delta. The remainder are a few oasis communities in Western Egypt and Sinai. With the exception of Northern Sudan, the current map of Egypt is pretty darn close to its historic borders.

Nor is Egypt a barbaric culture. It is actually a fairly complex and refined culture (that the place has not completely fallen apart is in large part do to that culture). But it is a corrupt and hobbled culture (and if we can blame anyone for that it is the Ottomans). And its economy is stimed and people with talent either have to join the baksheesh economy or leave.

The current Islamic movement is just a swing from socialism under Nassar, and American subsidized cronyism under Sadat-Mumbarak-Egyptian Army. Well that and a population explosion of about 30 million people with no jobs for them to do. What Egypt needs is a transformation like what happened in Taiwan and South Korea so all those young Egyptians can make money.

Joe

Okay, I blame Mohammed too. And Cleopatra (that little slut).

Joe

And hirsute Hatshepsut. She was a female pharaoh with a beard!

http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

Its never too late to blame the British as far as I’m concerned.

Droidist

I find myself in agreement with MaDrr, if we’re speaking in a practical fashion.

Joe has a good point about the cultural slant, but the downturn started with Mohammadism, which even for the 7th Century — when life was cheap, and barbarism was the rule — strove to find the spectrum-endpoint on man’s ability to rival Satan’s cruelty, dishonesty, and evil.

If we were going to go a-building, ala Japan, we needed to do it after we defeated the Nazis instead of allowing a power vacuum to form. The winner in a power vacuum is the group most willing to discard the rules and slit throats… something wholly enshrined as holy – along with lying and treaty-breaking in the various moslem scriptures. Tailor-made as a political power philosophy.

Seeing who was running our country during this period, and seeing how wonderfully islam meshes with Progressivism, AND knowing it was Mr. Peanut who kicked-off the current state of affairs — I can’t help but wonder how much was happenstance (don’t let good seeds go to waste) and how much was generally designed.

While you couldn’t predict the patterns closely, you’d be able to palm a card during the deal every hand, keep the atavistic pot bubbling, and turn the simmering pot of muslem inferiority complex up to a boil and have it bubble over when it could do the most good.

As for the long-range thinking necessary, we’re talking about people who took Gramsci’s advice and have over the same timeframe turned our schools into Progie brainwashing centers. Considering the makeup of the State dept during this period it wouldn’t have been difficult to do.

Anonymous

EVERY-thing in Egypt will resemble toast once Israel is forced into nuking them

The only thing left standing will be the Pyramids… with thousands of years of subsequent failure wiped away- maybe that will help them with that glaring self-esteem problem of theirs

Islamic society has always been parasitic. They have always supplemented what little they produce with the spoils of war. They raided their neighbors and took everything including the people who they sold as slaves. Egypt has little ability to do this in today’s world. If they try, they will be trounced, either by the victim or by others rushing to defend the victim. Egypt over bred its capacity to survive. Egypt needs to reduce its population by 2/3 in order to feed itself. Nature will do this for them without external help. The biggest mistake the West can do is rush to its aid because it will only prolong the misery. Islam created this problem with the birth to death fatalism it promotes. Let Islam solve this problem. I want to see Allah do loaves and fishes. Upon reflection, I guess I am proposing containment with neither charity nor pity.

DaveO

The outcome of Egypt’s devolution into an Islamic state is not in doubt. What is in doubt is whether it will be a satellite of Turkey, of Iran, or of Wahabist Saudi Arabia.

Egypt will follow whomever can put it to work, put bread and meat on the table, and forgive the coming paroxisms of rage as Islamist promises prove empty.

Our POTUS could not have resolved Egypt’s basic problem – an untenable economy. He can’t even balance his own checkbook, let alone the US of A’s.

Joe

If you ever drive around Egypt (especially the outskirts of Cairo) much of it resembles burnt toast, intermixed with smoldering trash piles and packs of mangy pariah dogs.

JeffS

AW speaks rightly. The cause of the current conditions of the Islamic controlled portion of the Middle East goes back a long ways.

I’m not sure that there ever was a practical way of fixing the problems, not when crazy is burned into the culture, nearly at the genetic level.

http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

You don’t know the half of it. I’m not one hundred percent sure of this, but I don’t think there’s even any such thing as an actual Egyptian anymore. I think the Arabs wiped them all out, or at best just swallowed them up. What else can you make of the fact that Egypt is the largest ARAB country by population. The Egyptians of the Pharaohs were NOT Arab. The same is true of Iraq, where the original Assyrian and Babylonian inhabits have been reduced to one percent each of the total population. The same with Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians, originally called Philistines. None of the original people exist anymore, its all Arabs.

That’s the sum and substance of these people’s history, but you’re supposed to be tolerant and accepting of them when they immigrate here.

Yeah, I guess we’ll just see how that works out.

Anonymous

” If we were going to go a-building, ala Japan”
So we should nuke’m first (twice). I like it.

Anonymous

Egypt will take the Saudi’s money but they suffer from an overabundance of nationalistic self esteem, they don’t do satellite very well. Their relationship with the princes will be a love/hate one.

http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

If the Mohammedins take power, they will eventually destroy the ancient Egyptian palaces, temples, and tombs — the Koran demands this. Ancient Buddhist statues anyone?

http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

Gentlemen, gentlemen: could Mohammed and the Pharaohs be the results and not the cause? Both believed in marrying within the close family.

http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

Please don’t take offense at this, but: sod off you wanker!

It was Britain that brought Western Civilization and order to the savages of the world. Without the Pax Britannia there would have been no Pax Americana.

My second will be contacting your second.

http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

Things were contained in that area of the world until the demand for oil and the discoveries of massive amounts of it in the Middle East were made. Islam had been thrashed by The West and was the Sick Man religion of the world. The way the Western powers handled the area after these events was what led to us being in the horrible situation we are in today.

We had the bastards under control, but we decided to become lax parents.

Take up the White man’s burden —
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard —
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: —
“Why brought ye us from bondage,
“Our loved Egyptian night?”

http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

It doesn’t matter, DavoO: the Muslim Brotherhood, which cares not for national boundaries will be in control. A Mohammedin is a Mohammedin is a Mohammedin.

Anonymous

The Pharaohs ruled at a time when despotism was the norm except for a couple cities in Greece or where tribalism was the rule. By the time Mohammed came on the scene an, event admirably described by J.Q. Adams, there were numerous more enlightened faiths such as the several different Christian denominations, Judaism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, Asatru, the sky worship of the Mongols and the Mayan or Aztec Religions. Any one of the aforementioned belief systems would be preferable to the Mideastern version of the Thuggees.